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09/01/2007: "Little people!"

Last weekend we invited some friends of ours from the Childrens Liturgy community of St Francis down to the farm. To our surprise, most everyone was able to come and camp in the north pasture. We hung out in the cool of the cedars for much of the afternoon, picked blackberries when we felt like it, visited the pig, and did other farm-like activities with children ranged in age from less than 1 year old to about 8 years old.

The fountain out back of the house was a focus for the children for much of the day: who knew that there were still a couple of surviving koi fish in there?



The pig was a popular attraction, not only for the kids but for Rebecca's mom, too, who had ridden the train up from California. If you put your hand up to the fence, the pig likes to sniff, sniff, sniff you with his leathery nose.



We had a fabulous potluck in the orchard around the fire pit, with hot dogs and chicken links and Chicken a la Dad (my own creation of chicken and rice and tomatoes, cooked in a Dutch oven on the fire).



Laurie and Dan and our family, shown above.



Vicky and Ethan and Gus and Elias. They were easily the most accomplished campers in the group, as Ethan is a teacher and off all summer; they camp all over each year.



It turns out that Jerry, shown here relaxing during dinner, grew up on a similar farm in Michigan. He was very interested in our farming activities, and he offered useful suggestions for dealing with the cellar flooding problems (key issue: get roof run-off further away from the foundation).





After dinner, of course, the children had a great many s'mores prepared around the campfire, and then everyone headed down to the pasture to see Nate milk the cow. Excitement was high!



We found Aura and Rainbow mooing quite vigorously, since Nate keeps them apart during the day in separate paddocks (that way Rainbow is encouraged to forage, and Aura builds up some milk for milking).



After having Aura on the farm for nearly a year now, Nate and Aura know each other so well that Nate is able to milk her out in the field without a stanchion, while Rainbow is nursing on the other side! Quite a feat, if you ask me.



After Nate is done, Rainbow keeps nursing until Aura gets a bit restive. It's amazing to see how roughly the calf goes at the udder: it's grab, suck, pull, shake, suck, wiggle... getting the last bit of milk.



Afterward, Nate showed the kids the milk. You can see the edge of the corn section of the garden in the background, which reminds me that I was going to title this posting "And not a a lick of work!" But, then I remembered that I helped Nate and Carol shuck corn on Saturday afternoon: about a quarter of the crop was ready for harvest. Carol is shown below carefully checking whether an ear of corn goes in the "save for seed" pile, the "human food" pile, or the "feed to the pig" pile.